


Personal Space

by peskywhistpaw



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, warning for one frustrated wizard swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-19
Updated: 2014-03-19
Packaged: 2018-01-16 06:54:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1336162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peskywhistpaw/pseuds/peskywhistpaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Remus is the only Marauder who appreciates personal space. Most of the time, anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Personal Space

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [a post on tumblr](http://lostmaeblleshire.tumblr.com/post/80025147104/bigbadveteranwerewolfhunter-remus-sirius-and), which was subtitled _Remus/Sirius and “Personal space is just something that happens between other people, we are after all Marauders and have no need of it.”_ Just a quick little fic that would probably be better if I spent some proper time on it.

“Er,” says Remus, eleven years old, as two someones violently wrench open his bed curtains. The one with artlessly tousled hair and glasses hops up onto the bed and scoots next to Remus, where he is nested sleepily in a mound of blankets. James Potter, Remus thinks, a little warily, which means the one who’s just flopped down face first on Remus’s other side must be Sirius Black.  
  
“Hullo,” James says cheerily.  
  
“What time – ?” Remus starts, rubbing one eye blearily.  
  
“Morning,” Sirius interrupts, his voice muffled. “Very. Early. Morning.” His hair is much shaggier than it had been two months ago when they’d all first come to Hogwarts, and somehow Remus thinks it suits him better.  
  
James scoots closer still, until there’s barely a hand’s breadth to spare between the three of them.  It’s alarming, having people so close, but it doesn’t feel hostile.  
  
“Remus Lupin, right?” he asks, and when Remus nods, James grins. They’d all exchanged names and pleasantries in the beginning, of course, but Remus has kept mostly to himself and his books, while James and Sirius babble excitedly to one another, and Peter Pettigrew turns over quietly to face the dormitory wall, face drawn with the loneliness and longing that Remus has carefully schooled from his own.  
  
“Excellent. Listen, you’re the only one who can cast a decent Softening Charm, yeah?”  
  
“And don’t be modest,” Sirius says, lifting his face up from the coverlet for the first time. Remus feels the corner of his mouth quirk, involuntary.  
  
Remus takes a deep breath. “All right then,” he says. “I can. Why?”  
  
“We’ve an idea, and we need your help,” James says. “It involves Slytherins. Bouncing Slytherins.”  
  
“Normally, this one’d do the Charmwork,” Sirius says, jerking a thumb toward James, “but he’s dead useless at this spell for some reason. And,” he adds, quickly assessing Remus’s expression,  and ignoring James’s rolled eyes, “best of all, we solemnly swear that you won’t get caught.”  
  
“What d’you reckon?” James asks.  
  
“I reckon...” Remus swallows, both afraid and exhilarated at the prospect of spending time with people who want to partner with him outside of a classroom. He knows they only chose him because he can do the spell, which isn’t so different from lessons, but maybe, maybe... “All right,” he says, trying to control the hope and the smile that threaten to spring out of him. “But only if you get off my bed.”  
  
*  
  
“Remus!” Sirius shouts, twelve years old. The corridors have been echoing with Remus’s name for the past hour, and people have been giving the three of them strange looks, but he doesn’t care. Remus is missing, and that’s all that matters. Maybe it would be more efficient for them to split apart in their search, but that seems unthinkable now. They will search in all the same places together, until the fracture is healed. It has to be healed. Sirius can’t handle another broken family, not so soon, not when it’s so much his fault again.  
  
“Ten points to Sirius for tact,” James had said after Remus fled, eyes wide, from the common room, but James’s voice was more tired than accusatory. “I thought we were going to talk to him about it together.”  
  
Sirius had shifted uncomfortably. “Didn’t seem fair,” he’d said, “to spring it on him like that. Just wanted to warn him a bit. That we know, I mean. You know him, he’s still not that fond of surprises.”  
  
It takes another hour before they find him, wedged in the corner of one of the greenhouses. His body looks thinner than usual, and the dark circles under his eyes look as if they’ve been carved there by someone’s clenched fists. Huddled amongst all the vibrancy of the greenhouse, Remus looks as though all the colors have been drained out of him. When he spots them, he covers his eyes with his hands, and the backs of them are covered in shocking lines of red. James and Peter share a look.  
  
“Go away,” Remus says softly. His voice sounds raw, scratched.  
  
“No,” Sirius says, firm.  
  
“Why? What could you possibly want? You already know. You’ve made that clear.”  
  
Sirius winces. “Not that clear, since you went running off – ”  
  
James makes a strangled sort of sound. Twenty points? he mouths at Sirius, before turning to Remus.  
  
“We do know,” says Peter hesitantly.  
  
“We were going to talk to you together,” says James.  
  
They creep closer, as if approaching a wild animal. And technically, well... But it’s not like that. They have to tell him it’s not like that.  
  
“Three against one, then, is it?” Remus laughs, bitter. “I suppose it’ll be easier this way, even with your Defense marks.”  
  
“Easier?” Peter looks confused, and the three of them gape for a moment before they understand.  
  
“We’re not here to hurt you,” James says, aghast. They finally reach him. “We’re here to, y’know, support you.”  
  
Remus makes that horrible laughing sound again. “Right,” he says. “How silly of me. You’ve come to form the Monsters Support Society. Obviously. It’s what any sane person would do.”  
  
“You’re not a monster, Remus,” Sirius says, reaching out tentatively. Remus flinches away, as if meaning to run, but Sirius catches his wrist, and anyway, there’s nowhere else for him to go. Remus stiffens, though he doesn’t try to pull away again.  
  
“You’re our friend,” Peter says.  
  
“We’re not leaving,” James says.  
  
“Even when we annoy the hell out of you.” Sirius gives Remus’s wrist a tug, and Remus relaxes, just slightly.  
  
*  
  
“This,” says Remus, thirteen years old, through clenched teeth. “This is it.”  
  
“What’s it?” Sirius asks cheerfully next to his ear. It should be too dark to see exactly where Sirius is, and it is, technically, but Remus can feel him, his every finger twitch and facial spasm and shifting of hair, so they might as well be out in broad daylight. Then again, Remus doesn’t exactly have any choice in the matter, since their bodies are plastered (uncomfortably, really) together.  
  
“This is why Permanent Sticking Charms are seventh year magic,” Remus says, “and why you shouldn’t get cocky about doing advanced magic in the dark, and why I am probably going to die with your elbow stuck in my armpit.”  
  
“My elbow is not in your armpit,” Sirius protests, “and anyway, s’not a Permanent Sticking Charm so much as a temporarily permanent one, which means we’ll only die if you manage to starve to death in the next four hours.”  
  
“Four hours!” Remus mock-wails, to hide the shiver that runs through him when he feels Sirius’s warm breath against his skin. So he adds, “Four hours of your sardine breath and inappropriate elbows!”  
  
When Sirius laughs, it makes Remus shiver all over again. Sirius has made him laugh so many times, more times than he could ever count, even if he wanted to, because this is the way Sirius naturally is: warm, infectious, hilarious. Remus still has not grown into his own humor, though he’s been testing it and shaping it these almost three years. So when Remus makes Sirius laugh outright, laugh until he’s shaking, laugh with that sound of surprised delight as if Christmas has come early, it’s worth being stuck in a confined space with only each other’s air to breathe.  
  
“You’ll just have to wait it out,” Sirius says. He’s shaking his head, from the way his hair brushes against Remus’s shoulder, soft as owl feathers.  
  
Remus pretends to sigh. “Oh, the things I endure.”  
  
*  
  
“Oi! Geroff!” Peter cries, fourteen years old, and shoves at James, but not very hard. James has swung his legs up over Peter’s as if to save space for other passengers, though of course, they have the entire compartment to themselves on the Hogwarts Express. Remus and Sirius sit across from the James-and-Peter pile, Remus smiling fondly at the flailing limbs and unmuffled curses. After a moment, he glances at Sirius, who is intently watching the tussle.  
  
Something is different between them today, as if this summer apart has damaged them in a way it never could before. When they had all found one another on the platform, Sirius had rushed to embrace the others, all grins as usual, but he’d barely looked at Remus, and seemed only to concede to give Remus an awkward pat on the back after seeing the confused expression on James’s face. Even when they’d sat down in the compartment, it was as if Sirius had needed to calculate something to do it, as if there were a certain number of centimeters that would make it possible for Sirius to tolerate Remus’s company. That thought hurts more than Remus can bear, because he’s assumed they were past the point of growing tired of him, like he’d feared most of first year.  
  
Maybe he’s mistaken, he thinks, and hopes clings to the thought and the arch of his body as he leans over to Sirius. “D’you think we ought to rescue them?” he asks.  
  
Sirius’s neck snaps almost audibly as he whips around the face him. “What?” he says, cheeks pink, a little breathless. He hesitates, then leans back toward Remus ever so slightly.  
  
“Um.” Remus is about to repeat himself, when James suddenly extricates himself from Peter and flings himself between Remus and Sirius, his legs flopping over Remus’s, his head in Sirius’s lap.  
  
Sirius jerks his own head away from Remus, glaring down at James. “Ever heard of personal space, Potter?”  
  
James grins up at him, waving his hand dismissively. “Personal space is just something that happens between other people,” he says. “We are, after all, Marauders, and have no need of it.”  
  
Not to be left out, Peter squishes himself beside Remus, which distracts him for a moment, though not long enough so that he misses the disappointed look on Sirius’s face, and the curious one on James’s.  
  
*  
  
Fifteen years old, and they don’t need to say anything at all. It will always be enough, now that they’re here, the moonlight turning their fur ethereal, the grass and soft dirt of the forest floor beneath their paws and hooves.  
  
They run side by side, taking turns with Peter on their backs when he can’t keep up with their pace, though he is surprisingly quick, both for a rat and for the chubby boy who seems to be forever toddling after James and Sirius. No one can underestimate any of them now.  
  
Once the long night stretches into near-morning, they creep back into the Shrieking Shack and curl up together, Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot, and Prongs. When they wake, they are boys with the stars on their tongues, and half of their afternoon classes already missed. Moony rests against Padfoot’s side a moment longer.  
  
*  
  
“I need to tell you something,” Sirius says, sixteen years old. His hands are wringing, a gesture he thought he’d got control over when he was fourteen and realized he had something real to be nervous about.  
  
Remus looks worried, but covers the expression with a thin smile. “Oh dear,” he says, a little too lightly. “The last time you said that, I ended up barricaded in a greenhouse.”  
  
“Barricaded?” Sirius scoffs, kicking Remus’s shoe gently. “We did no such thing. You, Moony, simply have an unfortunate habit of fleeing into spaces already enclosed on three sides.”  
  
“Right.” Remus sets down his quill, though not before tapping the nib gently against the side of the inkwell to remove any excess ink. Sirius’s heart strains uncomfortably. Careful Remus, studious Remus, enforcer of detail. How many times has he salvaged their escapades by remembering the one thing that, if forgotten, would have felled their plans to ruin? How many little habits does Remus have – how many little unconscious gestures, little flecks of ink on his fingertips – that can make Sirius ache? How many times has he almost started this conversation, despite the fact that he knows now that he is a Gryffindor through and through, and courage isn’t supposed to fail him? A thousand and one. He moves to stand behind Remus’s chair, and Remus twists to look up at him, almost hopeful, and it can’t just be Sirius, can’t just be his imagination, this thing between them is mutual.  
  
Isn’t it?  
  
One thousand and two. Sirius ruffles Remus’s hair, trying not to let his hand linger there amongst the pale brown. He fails.  
  
“Your hair’s too short,” he says, pieces of him falling away to make room for the forced cheer. He will joke, because that is what he knows how to do. “It was put to a vote, and I was elected to inform you of our decision. We’ve an image to maintain, y’know, as Marauders. Can’t be looking too respectable. People will start to talk. Bad for business.”  
  
“Business,” Remus repeats weakly, like maybe he’s trying to laugh. “Yeah, breaking rules has certainly made us quite the profit.”  
  
Sirius forces his hand away.  
  
*  
  
“It’s positively upsetting,” James growls, seventeen years old, as he violently wrenches open Remus’s bed curtains and shoves Sirius inside. Sirius’s expression is vaguely wounded, and Remus gapes at the pair of them. He’s wide awake, because seven years have taught him that wrenched curtains mean business, and mischief keeps no hours.  
  
“What’s Padfoot done now?” Remus asks, stifling the last yawn of the night with one scarred hand. “Finish off the last of your shampoo again?” It’s still dark outside, the only light coming from James’s wand, but Remus can’t tell what time it is. Not that it should matter. Keeping no hours, and all that, N.E.W.T. preparations be damned.  
  
“Oh, not just Padfoot,” James says, and Remus is astonished to realize that he sounds legitimately angry. This isn’t the preamble to a cleverly worded monologue, full of melodramatics and meant solely to entertain. This is real. Something is wrong. His hands clench around his sheets in anticipation. “Though I won’t tell you how many times he’s come whinging at me, all helpless-like, all help me oh Prongs in your infinite wisdom, I am forlorn. For fuck’s sake, Lily thought I was emotionally constipated. I can’t take it anymore. I am going to guard this four-poster, and I am not going to let either of you out until you resolve your issues. I don’t care if there’s about to be a bloody war on, I am first going to deal with the problems I am singlehandedly capable of solving.”  
  
And with that, he wrests the curtains shut again, leaving Remus and Sirius in darkness.  
  
“Issues?” Remus echoes after a moment, and then slips his wand out from underneath his pillow. “Lumos.” Light once again fills the tiny rectangle of space. Sirius looks briefly hunted, and then hesitantly climbs onto the end of Remus’s bed, pulling his arms up around his knees. He couldn’t get farther away if he tried. It’s just like fourth year all over again, and Remus won’t stand for a repeat.  
  
“You don’t usually have such a problem with personal space, Padfoot,” he says, only a bit daunted.  
  
Sirius arches a brow, just barely visible in the wandlight. “I thought that was my problem.”  
  
“Exactly.”  
  
“I thought you hated my problem.”  
  
“Things change,” Remus says, takes a breath, then goes on: “I think you know that.”  
  
Sirius doesn’t move, doesn’t speak.  
  
“Prongs is right,” Remus says. “I think you know that, too.”  
  
Probably only thirty seconds pass, but it feels like five hours, five hours of them staring at each other in adolescent awkwardness and guardedness and hope.  
  
“I didn’t want to ruin a good thing,” Sirius says at last.  
  
Remus sets his wand down. “Well then. Stop being stupid, and come here. I’ve got a better thing in mind.”  
  
Sirius gapes at him, and Remus laughs. He is no longer that shy boy, full of loneliness and longing, empty of humor and courage, no longer a collection of unguided dreams and talents. And Sirius has helped with that.  
  
“I told Prongs to pretend he couldn’t do a Softening Charm,” Sirius croaks.  
  
“Okay.” He’s known for a few years now, but it’s encouraging to hear it spoken out loud. Remus scoots forward, heart thrumming, chest swelling.  
  
“I hate giving you personal space.”  
  
Remus reaches out and cups Sirius’s face, smiling. “Good,” he says, closing the distance between them. “Funnily enough, so do I.”


End file.
